


if this isn't a kingdom (i don't know what is)

by mnabokov



Series: snow and dirty rain (世界) [1]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Coming of Age, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Scent Marking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-31
Updated: 2018-08-31
Packaged: 2019-07-05 02:44:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15854619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mnabokov/pseuds/mnabokov
Summary: Sehun knows that Jongin is angry. Here is why: Sehun is an Alpha, Jongin is an Omega. That is the way nature made them to be. But Sehun doesn’t think of Jongin as an Omega. He is, first and foremost, a wolf, like Sehun.





	if this isn't a kingdom (i don't know what is)

**Author's Note:**

> I crawled out the window and ran into the woods.  
> I had to make up all the words myself. The way  
> they taste, the way they sound in the air. I passed  
> through the narrow gate, stumbled in, stumbled  
> around for a while, and stumbled back out. I made  
> this place for you. A place for to love me.  
> If this isn’t a kingdom then I don’t know what is.  
>   
> \- Richard Siken’s _Snow and Dirty Rain_

Far away from cities of steel and asphalt, from clouds of smoke and pollution, where the woods are lovely, dark, and deep -- virtually untouched by man -- lives a strange and savage race. Half human, half beast, they roam the rolling hills, the mysterious forest, the mountains which rise and fall like uneven breaths.  
  
Here is a land where nature rules with an iron fist: rivers, as deep and as blue as the ocean, streak across beds of fresh grass; lush trees, tall and sturdy, age year after year, their roots gnarled and sunken deep within the earth. Here is a land without rules, a land known for being ruthless to its inhabitants, a land that seeks and singles out the weak-hearted.  
  
Here is where our story begins.  
  
  
  
Jongin has always lived in these woods. He’s lived and breathed this land since he was a pup. He knows it well, in the same intimate way that he knows how to soundlessly stalk prey on a hunt, in the same intimate way that summer comes to greet their pack every year, like clockwork.  
  
At the edge of the forest, a small stream cuts across the fertile earth. There’s a clearing not far from this stream, and in this clearing is where Jongin lives.  
  
He lives in a home built by Yifan, back when it was just Yifan and Minseok and Luhan and Junmyeon. It’s far from pretty, less of a house and more of a den, carved out of the trunk of a half-fallen redwood. Jongin, like Zitao and Kyungsoo and the other youth, knows its history well, since Yifan never fails to tell its story, _his_ story, every winter when the stream has nearly frozen over and all of the warm-blooded animals have hunkered down to wait out the cold.  
  
It goes something like this:  
  
The werewolves in the forest have always warred with the werewolves in the mountains. It’s something ingrained in their DNA, something that runs in their blood. The forest werewolves and the mountain werewolves have always fought, will continue to fight, over the precious resources and bountiful land. Yifan always says that they used to live by the lake, the one nestled at the foot of the jagged mountains, the one that contains sleek silver fish and the one that always attracts prey -- a prime resource to control.  
  
One particular winter had been exceptionally harsh. The mountain werewolves had come with hunger in their bellies and a desire for blood.  
  
Overpowered and forced to the edge of the forest, their Alpha Yifan, accompanied by Minseok, Junmyeon, and Luhan, had stumbled upon a serendipity: the belly of a fallen redwood, an enormous hollow nearly ten arm-spans tall and twice as wide. They settled there and never left.  
  
The rest of them came along later, strays from other territories, runaways, you name it. Junmyeon’s Omega and caring nature invited them in.  
  
Now, their pack is hardly typical, instead a strange collection of werewolves that don’t quite fit in anywhere else. But they’re _pack_ , and Jongin can’t ask for anything else.  
  
Jongin loves these woods, loves his home. He loves that they had to expand their space, stripping bark from fallen trunks and constructing rooms of a sort, to make space for their growing pack. He loves the purling of the stream by their den, the rustle of leaves in evening, the smell of redwood bark on a rainy day.  
  
He loves that Yifan and Junmyeon fit together so well, Alpha and Omega, one strong and leading, one caring and kind. He loves the playful Betas, Minseok and Luhan. Jongin is too young to present, but he loves the way Baekhyun -- who just proudly presented as an Alpha a few moons ago -- still rough-houses with him, scrabbling and play-fighting in the grass. He loves his pack. He trusts his pack.  
  
Sehun comes to them in the spring, along with the smell of blooming wildflowers and weak sunlight.  
  
This is where the story _really_ begins.  
  
Jongin comes back to the shelter one evening with dirt stains on his skin and grass in his rumpled hair, from chasing Zitao outside.  
  
“Who’s that?” he asks, when he sees the strange boy in their home.  
  
“This is Sehun,” Junmyeon says, perusing their makeshift kitchen, in search of something for the new boy to eat. “He’s part of our pack now.”  
  
Jongin scampers up, full of a curiosity and eagerness that only a child can have.  
  
Upon closer inspection, Sehun looks very pale, too pale for someone who should be running free in the woods, roaming the forest day in and day out. He’s skinny and doesn’t smell like anything besides springtime -- too young to have presented then, just like Jongin.  
  
“Sehun, this is Jongin,” Junmyeon says. In the far corner of the room, Yifan’s talking lowly to Luhan, their conversation nearly inaudible.  
  
“Sehun,” Jongin tries out the word in his mouth. It feels foreign. “Sehun, Sehun, Sehun.” He wants to roll the name on his tongue until it becomes familiar.  
  
Junmyeon sets a plate of mushrooms and a few cuts of meat onto the table. Jongin’s hand darts out to steal some, but Junmyeon quickly slaps it away. “This is for Sehun,” Junmyeon scolds. “Be nice, Jongin.”  
  
Junmyeon turns away to join Yifan’s conversation with Luhan. Whenever the elders talk, Jongin thinks that it’s boring. He doesn’t listen, doesn’t care.  
  
Instead he watches Sehun.  
  
Sehun takes a piece of mushroom and puts it into his mouth. He chews, then swallows. Jongin stares.  
  
“Jongin,” Sehun says finally. “Jongin, Jongin, Jongin.”  
  
Jongin’s name sounds different from Sehun’s lips.  
  
Sehun glances behind his shoulder and, upon seeing that Junmyeon’s preoccupied by conversation, hands Jongin a piece of meat.  
  
Jongin takes it. Sehun smiles.  
  
  
  
The wolf that lives under Jongin’s skin is rarely alone. There are wolves that live within all of them. But the wolf that resides in Jongin’s bones is a pup, and cares not for responsibility. Since he’s the youngest, he gets away with a lot -- Yifan takes Baekhyun with him to mark the perimeter of their territory, and Chanyeol soon turns old enough to accompany the others on hunts. Jongin gets to climb the fallen trunks and chase moths.  
  
When Sehun comes, Sehun takes Jongin’s spot of the youngest.  
  
For five days, Jongin sulks resentfully. Now, he has to share his space in the den with Sehun. Sehun, who sleeps soundlessly -- unlike Chanyeol, who snores, and Zitao, who mumbles in his dreams. Sehun, who turns into a tight ball -- like those pillbugs that Jongin finds when he’s nosing in the dirt -- curled up into himself like he’s always slept alone.  
  
Sehun’s quiet, but not timid. He speaks when spoken to, and isn’t afraid to snap his jaws warningly at Yixing, who sniffs him too closely. Instead of being offended, Yixing lets down his guard and nips at Sehun’s arm in retaliation. Camaraderie.  
  
Junmyeon and Luhan all but pamper Sehun, running fingers through his hair and making sure that the other boys don’t steal his food. Jongin squashes down his resentment.  
  
On the morning of Sehun’s sixth day, Jongin wakes to see the other boy staring out the window.  
  
Jongin wipes the sleep from his eyes and crawls over. To avoid waking up a sleeping Zitao, Jongin whispers, “What are you looking at?”  
  
Sehun cocks his head. “Outside.”  
  
Jongin fiddles with a piece of his hair. He worries his lip. He shifts his weight from left foot to right foot. Then he blurts out, “I want to show you something.”  
  
Sehun accidentally steps on the corner of Chanyeol’s blanket and Jongin has to yank him out of the room of sleeping boys, but they manage to sneak out of the den just as the sun peeks over the horizon.  
  
“Where are we going?” Sehun asks.  
  
Jongin tightens his grip on Sehun’s wrist. Sehun’s bones are thin and pale, like the rest of him.  
  
Out of the den, across a grass clearing, ducking under low hanging branches they go, clambering through the forest. The smell of aphids’ honeydew and dawn fills the air, as sunlight creeps over the land. Jongin laughs and Sehun joins him, loud and clear in the morning light. They laugh because they can; they laugh because they snuck out of the den, right from under Yifan’s nose; they laugh the laugh of children.  
  
After climbing over a half-rotten trunk, Jongin skidders to a halt. Sehun runs into him, his face bumping into Jongin’s back, hands coming up to grip Jongin’s shoulders. They’ve broken out of the trees, and stare at the slow-moving stream in front of them. The water is crystal clear.  
  
“Look,” Jongin points across the stream.  
  
A weeping willow droops over a shallow, slow section of the water, its light green leaves barely skimming its reflection.  
  
“Nice, right?” Jongin turns, smiling crooked but proud.  
  
“Let’s go,” Sehun says.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Let’s swim to it,” Sehun tilts his head curiously. “Don’t tell me you’ve only ever looked at it.”  
  
“Of course not,” Jongin indignantly bluffs.  
  
Despite the warm weather, the stream is snow water, melted and trickled down, crystal clear and icy cold as they wade across. Jongin trails after Sehun, watching the ripples move over Sehun’s pale ankles, his thighs, swirling the loose edge of the hem of his shirt.  
  
If you were being particularly imaginative, you might see it as an island. Jongin sees it as a rock, this jut of stone barely visible, just barely glinting wetly underneath the gurgle of water. It's an easy climb, and nice to sit on. The pool of stagnant water there, tucked away, reflects the black rock, the clear sky, the ripple of willow leaves swaying above them. An arbitrary pattern of the dappled sunlight dances as a breeze whispers across the mirrored surface of the water. Half hidden half exposed, half light half shadow, half water half earth, half Sehun and half Jongin.  
  
What they talk about Jongin doesn’t remember, doesn’t care. All that matters is that they pretend to be sea creatures, blowing bubbles with their mouths on the surface of the water, splashing and whooping and yelling and enjoying themselves.  
  
Later, after their skin has wrinkled and their voices are hoarse, they wander back to the den. Heads bowed and standing in twin puddles of river water dripping off their clothes, they listen as Minseok chides them with a worried frown, reminding them not to wander far.  
  
Without real disappointment, Junmyeon shakes his head with an exaggerated sigh. “Let the pups be pups.”  
  
With such light punishment, Jongin turns to Sehun, matching grins spreading across their faces. Minseok scowls and whacks them both lightly on the head, but lets them run out to the grassy field behind the den to run and dry in the afternoon sunlight.  
  
After that, Jongin’s resentment disappears, disappearing in the same way that cold water evaporates when touching hot earth.  
  
He and Sehun quickly grow inseparable.  
  
Zitao’s more reserved and doesn’t like rough-housing as much, which is why Jongin drags Sehun out into the clearing more often than not, chasing dragonflies and rolling around in the dirt.  
  
It’s easy, it’s natural to play with Sehun: Sehun grabs Jongin’s ankle as Jongin climbs up a moss-covered boulder; Jongin yelps and slips down, the two of them crashing into the earth; Jongin bites on the soft, milky skin of Sehun’s left wrist; Sehun growls then laughs when Jongin scrunches his nose.  
  
Hours blur into days.  
  
Sehun slots neatly into their pack like there was a spot there meant for him -- Jongin firmly believes that there always was, like pack wasn’t pack until Sehun was right there next to Jongin.  
  
The two of them wake up early in the mornings, chasing each other out of the den. Sometimes they run to the river, and other times they try climbing trees, although they both fail miserably at the latter. Jongin’s hair flops into his eyes and Sehun pushes it away for him.  
  
As spring gives way to summer, they play-fight in the shade of towering redwoods, bare feet sinking into the ever present layer of detritus underfoot, browning leaves and pine needles and moist soil. They follow trails of white mushrooms and dig for young roots; they find ripe berries and gorge themselves until their bellies are full.    
  
Days blur into weeks.  
  
Chanyeol presents as an Alpha on a hot summer evening. All of them are gathered near the den: Yifan and Minseok sprawled out on the bare dirt, soaking in the blessed shade after a warm day of sun; Baekhyun and Yixing and Junmyeon leaning against the giant redwood; a few others messing around inside the den; Jongin and Sehun with their noses pressed to the grass, eyes nearly crossed as they inspect the ground in front of them.  
  
Pill bugs instinctively curl into tiny balls as they prod them, and a line of ants marches right by Jongin’s elbow.  
  
Sehun finds a grasshopper and makes a noise of delight, pouncing and catching the bug in one clean swoop, a cloud of dust puffing from the ground.  
  
“Let me see, let me see!” Jongin whines, shoving at Sehun and pawing at the cage that Sehun’s hands form. They squabble for a second, when Luhan emerges from the den, a proud smile on his face.  
  
“Our newest Alpha,” Luhan announces, dragging a flushed Chanyeol with him.  
  
Chanyeol mumbles something and Yifan and Baekhyun head over to fondly offer congratulations as fellow Alphas. Jongdae and Zitao come up nuzzle under Chanyeol’s arms, taking in Chanyeol’s new, distinct scent.  
  
Distracted, Jongin and Sehun look up.  
  
Yifan claps Chanyeol solidly on his back just as the grasshopper slips from Sehun’s loosened grip. Jongin shrieks in dismay and Sehun chases after it, Jongin right on his heels. The two of them chase the grasshopper through the grass, thoughts of Alphas and Omegas and presenting leaving their minds as quickly as they came.  
  
Weeks bur into months.  
  
They enjoy the last few days of summer by the water, their pack quenching their thirst or resting on the sun-baked banks of the river. Jongdae, who has just presented as a Beta, enjoys the drowsy torpor at the side of Luhan and Minseok. The three Betas watch Baekhyun and Kyungsoo compete to see who can run faster. Yifan and Zitao have disappeared a while ago to remark their territory boundaries. Jongin and Sehun chase fireflies.  
  
They eat and play and grow. Each day, they run a bit faster, explore a bit farther, and return hungry for dinner. Yet despite the hours they spend underneath the sun, Sehun’s pale skin refuses to tan. Jongin secretly loves it.  
  
At night, Sehun still curls up into himself. Jongdae’s moved out of their room, preferring instead to rest with the other Betas -- Yixing and Minseok and Luhan -- leaving just Chanyeol, Kyungsoo, and Zitao with Jongin and Sehun. Unlike the rest of them, Sehun’s completely silent in his sleep.  
  
Autumn steals away the warmth before long, and pretty soon, they all huddle in the nest of their blankets at night. The hunts that Yifan leads become longer and longer, as more prey hides away from the oncoming winter.  
  
On the first day of winter, long after Chanyeol begins snoring and Zitao starts muttering in his sleep, Sehun shifts in his nest. Jongin, who can’t sleep, whispers across the room, “Are you cold?”  
  
Sehun freezes.  
  
“No one else is awake,” Jongin reassures Sehun.  
  
When Sehun doesn’t say anything, Jongin isn’t offended. Sometimes Sehun is like that.  
  
Jongin just brushes it off, and tugs his blanket closer around himself. He’s wearing a long pair of wool pants that used to belong to Minseok. The wool scratches his ankles as he tries to make himself comfortable.  
  
“Scoot over,” Sehun says, dragging his blanket across the floor.  
  
Jongin has to tamp down on his grin, and does as asked.  
  
The sleeves of Sehun’s sweater dangle over his hands, pooling around his fingers. Sehun gets cold easily, and likes wrapping himself up in soft sweaters. Even in the summer, Jongin had noticed that Sehun liked wearing loose shirts instead of choosing to wear nothing, like Jongin often does. Jongin doesn’t mind; Sehun’s sweater used to be pink, but is now smooth and worn.  
  
Sehun throws his blanket on Jongin’s head with a giggle and Jongin yelps.  
  
“Be quiet,” Sehun shushes him. Jongin wriggles his head out of the blankets and drags Sehun down.  
  
Jongin retaliates, “But you’re the one who threw the blanket at me!”  
  
Sehun grins and rolls into the warm blanket. They lie with their backs on the floor, staring up at the ceiling.  
  
The next night, Sehun waits until Chanyeol snores before sneaking over to Jongin’s side. In the morning, Jongin grabs Sehun’s blanket and puts it next to his. That night, after a dinner of vegetable soup, Sehun settles in next to Jongin and, although Zitao watches curiously, no one says a word.  
  
“Jongin,” Sehun breathes out quietly, a few minutes later when everyone else is asleep. “Jongin, Jongin, Jongin.”  
  
Jongin lets his eyes close as he turns onto his side, curling his body into Sehun’s like a leaf turns to the sun. Sehun smells like the clean salt of sweat and sleep and the wild acorns they found that afternoon. He smells like pack.  
  
“Sehun,” Jongin says. “Sehun, Sehun, Sehun.”  
  
  
  
That spring marks Sehun’s first year with their pack.  
  
The following months pass quickly. The wolf pup waiting in Jongin’s chest grows, thrumming with the desire to run and chase.  
  
In the woods, he and Sehun still play, but now, their limbs are longer, their ears and noses more sensitive. Instead of following dragonflies and grasshoppers, they scent and stalk rabbits and foxes. Yifan takes them out to the edge of the territory, and Sehun and Jongin watch in awe as Yifan lets his fingers turn to claws, teeth elongating as he and Chanyeol practice fighting. The wolf under Jongin’s skin aches to break free.  
  
Yifan doesn’t let them practice fighting with the others who have already presented and can already turn their features lupine at will. So Jongin and Sehun fight with each other -- Zitao prefers to watch and Kyungsoo wrinkles his nose when Jongin asks.  
  
One year turns to two turns to three. After the fourth, Jongin stops keeping track. It doesn’t matter now, that Sehun came from somewhere else. They all did. What matters is where they are now. What they are now -- _pack_.  
  
They mature.  
  
Sehun’s tall now, taller than Yifan and nearly taller than Chanyeol. He’s still perfectly pale and quiet and self-assured, but he walks with more confidence, like he’s finally grown into a body he’s proud of.  
  
Jongin’s taller too, not as tall as Sehun, but at least taller than Yixing and Baekhyun. He’s good at hunting, tracking, and often accompanies Minseok and Yifan when their supplies grow low.  
  
Jongin never thinks about it, really, the way that he and Sehun grow close in a way the rest of the other boys are not. If Sehun should lean his head against Jongin’s shoulder during dinner, or if Jongin should hold onto Sehun’s shoulder after a round of scuffling -- well, it only feels natural.  
  
One evening, Jongin’s lounging in the kitchen on an autumn morning, idly carving a piece of oak with a sharp knife, when Baekhyun and Luhan storm in, teeth bared and hackles raised. Junmyeon and Sehun look up worriedly from where Sehun had been helping Junmyeon dice meat for their dinner.  
  
“What’s wrong?” Junmyeon asks sharply.  
  
“Mountain pack,” Luhan spits out.  
  
Baekhyun makes a small noise of concern and Jongin rushes over. For all of Yifan’s stories, none of the youngers have seen the mountain pack in the flesh before; this is Baekhyun’s first interaction with them and he looks pale.  
  
“They were on our territory,” Luhan continues, expression dark, “Two Betas and an Alpha. Baekhyun and I chased them off, but -- ”  
  
There’s a bloody gash on Baekhyun’s left leg, torn straight through the material of his pants.  
  
Jongin stares, not knowing what to do, until Minseok pushes him aside to clean the wound expertly.  
  
When Yifan and Chanyeol return from a hunting exercise later, Yifan growls, low and deep. “We’ll check our boundaries twice as much from now on,” he announces, “If we give them an inch, they’ll take a mile.” He turns his gaze over to Jongin and Sehun, looks as though he’s about to say something, then changes his mind. “Keep your eyes and ears sharp. I’ve already lost enough to these fuckers.”  
  
Kyungsoo presents as a Beta, and the very next day, Jongdae whisks him off to practice controlling his claws.  
  
Jongin and Sehun take first blood not long after that.  
  
It's just them two and Yifan on a standard patrol of their border, deep in the woods, when a young Beta from the mountain pack appears, eyes narrowed and teeth bared. Yifan corners it before backing away to let Jongin and Sehun step in. Jongin holds the Beta down and Sehun goes in for the kill.  
  
“Are you out of your mind?” Junmyeon hisses when they return. Rarely does Junmyeon go on hunting trips or border patrols; instead the lone Omega prefers to stay close to the den, cleaning or cooking or foraging for vegetables and fruits.  
  
There’s a nasty split on Jongin’s bottom lip, and Sehun’s sporting a bruise under his eye; both of them have blood on their hands, in their mouth, on their clothes, but adrenaline pumps through their veins, and all Jongin can do is keep the wolf under his skin from howling with victory. “They haven’t even presented _,_  what were you thinking -- ”  
  
“It had to be done,” Yifan says curtly. “I was behind them the whole time, and it was only one Beta -- ”  
  
“One Beta?” Junmyeon scowls. “One Beta that could’ve -- ”  
  
The two of them continue bickering while Sehun and Jongin slip away to clean themselves in the stream. Moonlight glitters around them, and blood looks like water in the night. Jongin dunks his head under the freezing cold water. He holds his breath, the wolf in him purring in satisfaction. When Jongin resurfaces, he inhales again, and it feels like he’s been born anew.  
  
  
  
Twice more Jongin and Sehun encounter mountain wolves. Twice more they kill, together again. Jongin, when his targets’ bodies have fallen limp, leaps over to help Sehun finish each time. And each time, Jongin’s fingers twitch with the shadow of claws.  
  
“What do you feel?” Sehun murmurs to Jongin. Jongin’s slung an arm around Sehun’s now undeniably broad shoulders as they limp back to the den. There’s a cut on Jongin’s thigh, and four claw marks dragging across his hip. Under the pulse of adrenaline, the wounds don’t even sting. Blood paints their skin, still warm.  
  
“Something,” Jongin admits. He doesn’t know how to describe the strange twisting in his gut, the aching behind his teeth.  
  
“Yeah,” Sehun rasps, low and gravelly. “Me too.”  
  
After cleaning themselves in the stream and enduring a round of half worried, half frustrated looks from Junmyeon over dinner, they finally get to bed.  
  
Like usual, they wind up close to each other. It’s warm. Springtime. The window’s open, letting in the sound of cicadas. A fly buzzes.  
  
Sehun’s knee brushes Jongin’s thigh. His eyebrows are creased, even in sleep. Jongin reaches out and touches two fingers against Sehun’s elbow.  
  
Zitao shifts from where he’s sleeping near Chanyeol and turns so he can meet Jongin’s gaze. He had presented as a Beta two weeks ago. He whispers softly, “Were you scared?”  
  
Truthfully, Jongin says, “No.”  
  
“I saw them,” Zitao says. “I saw an Alpha from the mountain pack when I was patrolling with Yifan two nights ago.”  
  
“We’ll be okay,” Jongin reassures.  
  
Zitao sighs. Jongin doesn’t remember when they fall asleep.  
  
The next morning, Jongin wakes with his nose buried in Sehun’s hair. Both of them are purring lowly in a subconscious rumble. It’s closer than they’ve ever been before: Sehun’s legs are tangled with Jongin’s, and a hand clutches Jongin’s waist. It feels right.  
  
Jongin doesn’t resist the urge to nuzzle his cheek into Sehun’s shoulderblade. Sehun brushes a finger right where Jongin’s shirt is rucked up; his thumb touches bare skin. Jongin lets out a small noise of content.  
  
“Jongin, Sehun!” Luhan calls. He pushes open the door and Jongin peeks at him over Sehun’s arm.  
  
“Come on, get up,” Luhan says, exasperated. “We don’t have time to stay in bed all day.”  
  
Jongin grumbles something under his breath and Sehun stifles a chuckle as they shuffle out of the room. Luhan swats them on the backside. He casts a lingering gaze at where Jongin and Sehun’s blankets are twisted together on the floor. After a slight pause, he closes the door.  
  
They’re at another border skirmish when it happens again.  
  
“Sehun,” Baekhyun calls out, “Sehun, let go.”  
  
“Really?” a mountain pack Alpha barks. “You’re training unpresented pups now?”  
  
“Let him go,” Luhan hisses to Sehun, where Sehun’s jaws are clamped around the arm of a young mountain Beta. The Beta’s thrashing, snarling, but Sehun refuses to let go.  
  
“Sehun,” Jongin rasps, his own jaw aching from how he’s holding back his own bite, since Luhan called for a halt. They’re too evenly matched -- Baekhyun, Luhan, Jongin and Sehun against three spry mountain Betas, locked in a stalemate. “Sehun -- ”  
  
Jongin touches Sehun’s clenched arm and Sehun yanks back, as if burned.  
  
The Beta howls and leaps away, arm bloodied.  
  
“Teach your pups how to behave,” the mountain Alpha snaps, before turning away and retreating with the rest of his werewolves.  
  
Sehun turns onto Jongin, teeth gnashing and eyes dark. “Jongin,” Sehun says, from deep within his chest. His bloody fingernails snag on Jongin’s shirt. “Jongin,” he says again. Jongin can’t look away; his heart is thrumming in his chest and the metallic tang of blood hangs potent in the air.  
  
There’s an answer ready to bubble out of Jongin’s throat when Luhan jerks Sehun away.  
  
“Time to go home,” Luhan says, stepping in between them. Even though he’s a Beta, Luhan’s growl is intimidating. “Pull yourself together, Sehun.”  
  
Sehun snaps his teeth together and darts after Baekhyun, sufficiently cowed.  
  
“Come on,” Luhan says to Jongin, a bit softer. “Let’s go.”  
  
The wolf inside Jongin whines for its loss.  
  
  
  
Sehun’s soft-spoken, but quick-witted and acerbic when provoked. He doesn’t leap into arguments like Jongin and, as he grows older, he holds back from play-fighting, preferring to rest alongside Zitao as Jongdae grapples with Kyungsoo in the dirt. When it comes to Jongin, he’ll cave and wrestle with him just like when they were boys, but for the most part, he remains an observer.  
  
But there’s no denying his broad shoulders and his large hands, the firm tone he takes when he questions one of Yifan’s decisions, the confidence with which he hunts. He’s quiet but he’s not shy or spineless; he’ll bite harder than Yixing and he’s more bloodthirsty than Baekhyun. He’s tall and lean and supple, like a whipcord, or a willow branch. No one’s surprised when he presents as an Alpha.  
  
Where he once smelled like faint acorn and sunlight, Sehun now smells like something earthy, like crushed pine and wet moss after a storm and steely iron. He smells like an Alpha, strong and red-blooded.  
  
“What,” Sehun grumbles, annoyed when he inches up to Jongin that night only to have Jongin wrinkle his nose.  
  
Jongin shifts on the blankets, but doesn’t move away. “You just smell different,” Jongin says.  
  
“Like what?”  
  
Chanyeol mumbles in his sleep and Sehun shifts closer. “Like what,” he repeats, quieter.  
  
“Like _different._ ” Jongin flops on his back. It’s getting warmer, closer to summer. Humidity creeps into their room.  
  
Sehun whines, a high-pitched and distinct noise. Jongin turns over and pulls him close so that Sehun will quiet.  
  
Satisfied, Sehun snuggles closer. He falls asleep within seconds, but Jongin lies awake, breathing in his scent.  
  
  
  
Everything changes when Jongin presents two weeks later.  
  
  
  
It slams into him early one summer night.  
  
Jongin wakes and he gasps for air.  
  
His lungs drag in a breath and it feels like he’s inhaled -- it smells like earth and rain and the smoke of a wildfire and Sehun and Sehun and _Sehun_ \--  
  
“Jongin,” Sehun groans. “Jongin -- ”  
  
Moonlight leaks into the room, turning everything shades of metal: Sehun’s skin is white gold and his eyes are glinting silver. He looks -- he looks _wrecked_ , his eyes blown and mouth slack and Jongin can’t _breathe_ \--  
  
There’s heat, new and unfamiliar, itching and burning and blazing under his skin, boiling his blood; Jongin cants his hips forward, rocking into Sehun’s body. The blankets are darker than he remembers.  
  
“Jongin,” Sehun snarls, louder now.  
  
Zitao mumbles sleepily, “Sehun?”  
  
Jongin lets out a whimper. Instinct pushes him up, onto his elbows and knees and then Sehun’s lips are pressed against Jongin’s ear, hissing his name. Jongin’s wolf is shaking its head, confused, aching, _scared_ \--  
  
Chanyeol lets out a loud rumble from across the room as he wakes; Jongin can’t stop his hands from curling into fists. The blanket underneath him is wet, stained. He feels like he’s on _fire_ ; he’s burning up from the inside but he’s also drowning from the scent of Sehun, twice, no, three times as strong in the humid summer air --  
  
The door bangs open.  
  
“Sehun!” someone barks from the open door. “Shit, Chanyeol, get back!” Light floods into their room, bright and disorienting. Everything feels like it’s blurry, or underwater; and Jongin whimpers again, his head drooping between his elbows, still on his hands and knees, face down ass up, _presenting_ \-- “Fuck, get Yifan, get Yifan!”  
  
And then Sehun’s being yanked away from him; “ _Sehun, stop_ ,” Yifan commands, the authority in his voice bone-chilling and now Chanyeol’s whining and Sehun’s too far, too far. Jongin meets Sehun’s gaze and Sehun looks absolutely, positively dumbstruck, frozen with shock --  
  
Jongin blinks and realizes what the slickness underneath him is.  
  
  
  
“ -- shouldn’t have let him out, I _told_ you -- ”  
  
“He’s not a child, Junmyeon, I won’t -- ”  
  
“ -- just let me care for him, Yifan… ”  
  
Jongin wakes to Yifan and Junmyeon’s murmured arguing. With a jolt, he realizes that he’s in Junmyeon’s bed. It smells familiar and comforting.  
  
Summer drenches the space from ceiling to floor: stiflingly, unbearably hot. Last night comes back in a humiliating rush.  
  
An Omega.  
  
Jongin squeezes his eyes shut again, taking relief in the darkness.  
  
“Jongin?”  
  
Jongin cracks open an eye.  
  
Junmyeon smiles weakly.  
  
Junmyeon slips into the bed next to him and they linger there for a moment. Then Junmyeon quietly begins an explanation of heats and imprinting and rutting. Jongin clenches his eyes closed again and tries not to let the embarrassment suffocate him. He’s not a _child_ , he knows how this works -- it’s just, he hadn’t been expecting this. Everyone knew that Sehun would be an Alpha in the same way everyone knew Zitao wouldn’t.  
  
Jongin had thought he would be an Alpha, if not a Beta, at least. Had he not grown up, right next to Sehun and Baekhyun and Kyungsoo? Had he not wrestled and brawled and fought with them when they were all young and scentless? Before this all mattered?  
  
“This doesn’t make you any weaker,” Junmyeon says, as though reading Jongin’s thoughts. “In fact, it makes you strong. It means…”  
  
Jongin feels warm tears prickling in his eyes. He doesn’t hear the rest of what Junmyeon has to say.  
  
The two of them, the only two Omegas in their pack, head downstairs shortly after that. Jongin tries not to let the bitterness appear on his face.  
  
A breakfast of freshly picked blackberries and warm meat awaits. Baekhyun’s throwing out the stems of the blackberries and Yifan’s casually drinking water.  
  
The Betas come up to him first, Yixing smiling kindly and Kyungsoo sniffing curiously and Zitao warm and familiar. Jongdae gives him a tight hug, followed by Minseok. Luhan looks as though he’s trying not to seem afraid. Sehun and Chanyeol are nowhere to be found. Jongin tries not to feel hurt. He sits down and eats.  
  
After breakfast, Yifan comes up and he smells strong and warm and Jongin caves, pressing his nose into Yifan’s chest. “Come,” Yifan says quietly, “Walk with me.”  
  
They walk deeper into the forest, twigs and leaves crunching underfoot.  
  
“I don’t want anything to change,” Jongin croaks, after a while of silence.  
  
“Nothing will change,” Yifan says.  
  
Jongin whirls around. “Everything has changed.”  
  
“Nothing will change,” Yifan repeats.  
  
The wolf wants to cry, wants to run and run and run, far away, back to when they were scentless and innocent and _equal_. Jongin tamps down on his fear and grits out, “I can’t be like Junmyeon. I need to go out there, I need to _run_ , you can’t coop me up -- ”  
  
“I’m not forcing you to do anything,” Yifan says. “If you want to fight, you will fight. If you want to train, you will train.” Yifan exhales shallowly through his nose. Jongin wonders what he smells. “I won’t lie to you, Jongin. This may be difficult -- ”  
  
“Because everyone will expect me to roll over and stick my ass out for a fuck? I’m not going to make it _easy_ \-- ”  
  
Yifan grabs Jongin faster than Jongin can process, gripping him by the scruff and hauling him in close. Jongin feels an irrational jolt of fear when Yifan’s eyes flash red.  
  
“Don’t,” Jongin snaps when he feels his body tightening -- an instinctive, primal reaction to being this close to a powerful Alpha. Jongin closes his eyes and wills himself to stop breathing too heavily, to stop pumping out pheromones that he knows he is producing. “Let me go.”  
  
Yifan jerks away. He says very slowly, “I won’t try to force you to do anything you don’t want, and no one will touch you, unless you want them to.”  
  
The wolf inside of him wants to roll over, duck his head in submission. Jongin looks Yifan squarely in the face and says, “You could never make me do anything I don’t want to.”  
  
Yifan peers at him. “I’m beginning to realize that.”  
  
  
  
To drive the point home, Jongin leaves Yifan to go hunting, alone, a few minutes later.  
  
The forest still sees him as a wolf -- not Alpha nor Omega, but just Jongin. She sends him a whisper in the form of a breeze, and he follows a trail of bees that she leaves for him, deeper into the darkness.  
  
A slow buzzing emanates from the hive at the end of the trail. Jongin examines the hive interestedly.  
  
Five minutes later, he has a bundle of dry leaves wrapped around the end of a tree branch. It hadn’t taken much to light the improvised match, and now smoke curls around the bees. They hum contentedly, and Jongin reaches into their nest to take a piece of raw honeycomb.  
  
For a moment, Jongin just looks at the section of honeycomb he’s broken off: the hexagonal wax structure is enchanting to look at. It’s constructed efficiently, to maximize the amount of room for living and storage, with no millimeter of potential space wasted. It’s a paradox, the cells both fragile and delicate, but solid and sturdy at the same time.  
  
It’s a paradox. It’s an oxymoron, a self-contradiction. Nature doesn’t work like that -- in nature, you are either strong or weak, you either survive or you surrender.  
  
Jongin can’t tell if he’s lying to himself or not.  
  
Chewy, slightly sweet and brightly flavored, the honeycomb itself is raw and delicious. Jongin savors the taste: a cocktail of a thousand kinds of wildflower pollen, sweet like mulled nectar and mellow ambrosia, the finest wine mother earth has to offer.  
  
Jongin sits on a small trunk and chews slowly, licking the honey from its fibrous wax. He thinks that it would be delicious on hot buttered toast, or in hot herbal tea. He’s planning on how to transport the honeycombs back to the den when someone comes stomping through the undergrowth.  
  
“What are you -- oh, it’s you.” Sehun’s holding a dented metal bucket and he looks surprised to see Jongin. He’d looked nearly as surprised last night.  
  
“Me,” Jongin agrees.  
  
“You’ve already got the honeycomb,” Sehun says.  
  
Jongin thinks he’s acting kind of stupid. He demands, “Are you going to keep on repeating the obvious?”  
  
Sehun breaks into a blinding grin.  
  
He drops the metal bucket and steals a portion of Jongin’s honeycomb.  
  
“This is good,” Sehun says, his tongue working around a piece of wax. He swallows and his Adam’s apple bobs. Jongin looks away.  
  
It feels all at once the same and different. Sehun still gripes about how Jongin stole his moment, and Jongin shoves him good-naturedly in retaliation.  
  
But their scents, fresh and new, mingle in the summer air for the first time. Their inner wolves sniff at each other, like strangers meeting. Not like back then, when they had played endlessly, uncaring of orientation and scent. Suddenly, Jongin realizes that they’ll never be those boys again.  
  
They break thick chunks of honeycomb into the bucket. Their shoulders brush.  
  
“Jongin,” Sehun says. Jongin will never take the way that Sehun says his name for granted. Sehun says his name smooth and slow, like raspberry mead, raw honey. He says his name and Jongin feels himself shudder.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Sehun says, eyes downcast.  
  
Jongin’s breath catches. “For what?”  
  
“Last night,” Sehun says, uncharacteristically hesitant. Sehun isn’t shy; timid isn’t a word that he understands. Sehun is strong-willed, and confident, and he speaks his mind, like a _true_ Alpha. “I didn’t -- ”  
  
“Right,” Jongin says slowly. He looks down as well. Sehun’s hands tremble. “Right,” he says again, bitterly. He feels like he’s a pup again, resentful that Sehun had taken his place as youngest. He feels like Sehun’s taken what Jongin had deserved: the unquestionable right to fight and hunt and kill and fuck, just like any other member of the pack. But now he has to be _kind_ , caring, soft, and gentle. The wolf within Jongin wants to howl with anger.  
  
Jongin’s grip turns too tight and he accidentally breaks a piece of honeycomb. He thinks: not so strong after all, just fragile. Just weak.  
  
They brush shoulders and take turns hauling the heavy bucket back to the den.  
  
“Let me take it,” Sehun says, for the third time.  
  
“I said, I got it,” Jongin snaps, for the third time. He grinds his molars together and readjusts his grip on the bucket.  
  
Sehun eyes him warily but waits for his turn. The path trailing back to the den is beaten down, worn smooth from use.  
  
“So,” Sehun drawls, stretching out the vowel longer than is necessary. He’s back to his lazy, cocksure self again. Jongin doesn’t know whether to feel infuriated or relieved.  
  
“So,” Jongin echoes.  
  
“I saw you walking with Yifan this morning,” Sehun says.  
  
“You were watching me?”  
  
“I woke up early.”  
  
“You were hiding from me,” Jongin accuses. “In the morning.”  
  
Sehun frowns. “I was not.”  
  
“Yeah, you were. You looked surprised to see me in front of the beehive.”  
  
“Maybe because I was surprised you had enough brains to figure out how to get the honey without my help.”  
  
Jongin shoves the bucket to Sehun. “Make yourself useful,” he snaps.  
  
Taking the bucket, Sehun grimaces. Then, he asks, “What were you two talking about?”  
  
“None of your business.”  
  
“None of my business?”  
  
“Yeah, now stop repeating the obvious.”  
  
Sehun splutters. “What do you mean, _none of my business_?”  
  
“Since when has my business been yours?” Jongin counters.  
  
“Since when? Since always, Jongin!” Sehun stops and plunks the heavy bucket at his feet. He looks, for some unfathomable reason, hurt. “You’ve always told me what was going on. Since _forever_.”  
  
Jongin huffs. They’re close to the den; Jongin can make out the familiar redwood and the smell of pack. He tries to grab Sehun and yank him, but Sehun’s all muscle and he refuses to budge.  
  
“Jongin,” he insists again. “Just tell me.”  
  
“It doesn’t matter,” Jongin says. The lie feels heavy and unfamiliar in his mouth. He can’t imagine how to explain to Sehun the way Yifan had grabbed him, the way Jongin couldn’t even control his own biology, the way Yifan had promised no one would touch him -- that he had even _needed_ to promise that.  
  
Sehun’s face pinches. “What happened?” he asks. “What changed? Why can’t you -- ”  
  
“What changed?” Jongin whirls around. “What _changed_? What do you _think_ changed?”  
  
Sehun straightens and steps closer. “Okay,” Sehun spits out, “So you presented as an Omega. So what? What _changed_?”  
  
“Everything,” Jongin insists, for the second time that morning. “It changes everything.”  
  
Inexplicably, Sehun looks surprised. “Did he,” his voice cracks, “Did Yifan ask you to -- ” Sehun’s cheeks turn red.  
  
“No,” Jongin says quickly, hotly. He looks away immediately, feels his face burning. “ _No_ ,” he insists again. “And I wouldn’t -- ” _wouldn’t let him breed me, touch me, fuck me_ \-- “Even if he asked.” Jongin corrects himself, “Even if he made me.”  
  
“Good,” Sehun says, vehemently. He looks shaken, then clears his throat, regaining some of his composure. “You shouldn’t. I mean -- if he does, if anyone does -- ”  
  
“What,” Jongin says, feeling irritation prickling under his skin. “Would you stop them for me?” Jongin sneers, “Protect me?”  
  
Sehun looks up and meets his gaze. “I would,” the Alpha says, plainly. “You know I would.”  
  
“And who would protect me from you?”  
  
Sehun tilts his head, like how he used to when he was a pup. He smirks, dark and wicked. Like a predator. “Why would you need protection from me?”  
  
“I -- I don’t know,” Jongin manages.  
  
Sehun takes another step forward. “Maybe I’m wrong,” he drawls. “Maybe you do need protection from me. I’m dangerous, you know.”  
  
“You’re full of yourself,” Jongin slurs out, like he’s speaking against larger teeth.  
  
Sehun’s too close, his scent simultaneously familiar and foreign, but undoubtedly heady. “You don’t think I’m dangerous?”  
  
They breathe each other in. Jongin bares his teeth, but his eyes snare on the shape of Sehun’s mouth, the tilt of his lip. “I think I can handle you,” Jongin says. Distantly, he hears himself making an inhuman noise, a subtonal growl coming from his chest, from deep within his belly, from an aching and stoking fire that roils dark and nameless.  
  
“Jongin? Is that you?”  
  
Sehun spins around and Jongin follows his gaze, tracking Zitao as he appears out of the brush. “Ah,” he says, “I thought I smelled you.” Zitao looks at the metal bucket. “What’s this?”  
  
“We found honey,” Sehun replies, smooth and easy. He picks up the bucket gracefully and hoists it onto his shoulder. “Behind the stream, by that big oak tree.”  
  
“Oh?” Zitao glances at Jongin, and at Jongin’s subtle gesture, Zitao follows Sehun back to the shelter. “That’s nice, I thought…”  
  
Jongin follows them, hardly listening as they make their way back home. Jongin drags his blunt fingernails over the goosebumps on his skin. The summer is warm. Too warm. Not cold enough for goosebumps, certainly. His fingers quiver, twitching into claws.  
  
  
  
Life goes on.  
  
For a few weeks after Jongin presents, the mountain pack lies low, seemingly sated by the abundance of flora and fauna that summer brings.  
  
At his own insistence, Jongin continues to participate in marking the boundaries of their territory with Minseok and Baekhyun; he still wrestles sometimes with Yixing; and he still runs free in the woods with Sehun, chainless and unbounded, swimming in the stream and chasing each other in the grass.  
  
He sleeps in another room with Zitao, now, away from Chanyeol and Sehun and the other Alphas. It’s a matter of propriety and safety, according to Luhan.  
  
“I won’t let you,” Luhan hisses, his claws digging five pinpricks of pain into Jongin’s shoulder. “You’ll either stay with me, or with Minseok.”  
  
Jongin is about to lash out with a reply when Sehun, eyes flashing and lips curled back in an ugly snarl, barges in.  
  
“What are you doing,” Sehun demands, upon seeing the scene before him. “Let him sleep where he wants.” Sehun tries yanking Luhan off, and then Jongin rounds on Sehun, starts on how he can fend for himself without Alphas butting in.  
  
Then their yells grow loud enough to attract Yifan, who comes in and lashes out at all three of them.  
  
“You,” Yifan points at Jongin, “Stay with Zitao in the spare room. You,” he points to Sehun, “Stay out of this.”  
  
At that point, Sehun bares his fangs viciously. “You won’t let him make his own decisions? He’s not your Omega to push and shove -- ”  
  
Yifan snarls right back and Sehun doesn’t back down, doesn’t even falter, even when Yifan replies, “I am his leader, and I am yours. Remember your position, Sehun.”  
  
Luhan then drags a thrashing Jongin out of the room. When Sehun reemerges a few minutes later, there’s an angry red mark on his cheek. Junmyeon tuts in concern and hurries over to snap at Yifan before caring for Sehun.  
  
Jongin swallows down his anger. He plays meek and inconspicuous, so much that he passes by, unnoticed by Luhan and Yifan and even Junmyeon.  
  
Since he knows which floorboards will creak, at what angle the moonlight will slant, and which way the breeze tends to blow at night, it isn’t difficult to maneuver his way into his old room.  
  
Sehun’s sitting with his knees drawn to his chest in the corner, eyes blinking slowly, unsurprised, when he sees Jongin creep in.  
  
After Jongin settles in next to Sehun, the Alpha goes, “He said I was too young. Too inexperienced. Didn’t know what I was talking about.”  
  
Jongin chides gently, “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
  
“What do you mean?”  
  
“I can take care of myself.”  
  
“And I can take care of myself,” Sehun argues.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Remember, our first kill? Our first _real_ kill?”  
  
“How could I forget? The mountain pack, at the edge of the stream.”  
  
Sehun nods in agreement. “I could’ve taken it myself, and yet you held the Beta down for me.”  
  
Jongin’s going to reply but Sehun beats him to it. “And the times after that. You always came over to help me hold the other wolves down, even though I was fine on my own.”  
  
Jongin shifts uncomfortably. “But it’s different -- now.”  
  
Silence.  
  
“You’re right,” Sehun sighs. “I know.”  
  
“What else did he say?”  
  
“Same old. Knowing my place in the pack, respecting the hierarchy.”  
  
Jongin brushes the angry mark on Sehun’s cheek. Jongin whispers, “I have to get back.”  
  
Sehun watches him go without a word.  
  
  
  
The pack treats him differently.  
  
Jongin can’t put a finger on it.  
  
Junmyeon takes care to give Jongin extra food at every meal, slipping in a fatty slice of meat, or a few extra mushrooms, or another ladle of vegetable soup.  
  
The younger Alphas, Chanyeol and Baekhyun, are wary and skittish for the first few days, unsure of how to treat an Omega that isn’t a maternal figure, like Junmyeon. Jongin shoves them and nags at them until they finally let down their guard. Chanyeol still makes his corny jokes and Baekhyun still helps Jongin improve his wood-whittling skills.  
  
But one day, Chanyeol’s wrestling Jongin in the dirt.  
  
The fight’s already heavily skewed, since Chanyeol’s all but twice Jongin’s height and weight. That doesn’t stop Jongin from using his speed and agility, though, and he gets in a few solid bites before Chanyeol trips him and they end up in the mud.  
  
Jongin yelps and tries to wriggle free. Chanyeol doesn’t try pinning down his hands or wrists, just lets his heavy body sink down onto Jongin’s as Chanyeol breathes in long and deep.  
  
“Chanyeol,” Jongin squirms underneath him. It’s like an enormous Alpha blanket. Chanyeol buries his nose in the crook of Jongin’s neck and his body starts rocking against Jongin’s.  
  
Jongin has to bite Chanyeol's ear before the other Alpha leaps away, embarrassed and refusing to meet Jongin’s gaze.  
  
“I’m so sorry,” Chanyeol blurts out, darting back, “I’m so sorry, Jongin, I didn't...”  
  
Just a second later, Sehun comes running out of the trees. He leaps, claws extended, to swipe at Chanyeol. Despite Chanyeol’s obvious height and size advantage, he backs away from Sehun with an whine.  
  
“Hey,” Jongin hisses. “Quit it! Leave him alone, he said he was sorry.”  
  
Yifan comes trotting out of the forest right on Sehun’s heels and lets out a low-pitched bark, chasing Chanyeol away for good.  
  
Jongin protests, “He didn’t mean anything -- ”  
  
Yifan turns to Jongin and Jongin wisely falls silent.  
  
Another time, Jongin’s trying to carve his initials into a smooth piece of pine when he feels a nose nudge against his temple.  
  
“Baekhyun,” Jongin pulls away with a faint sense of embarrassment. Baekhyun scrunches his face at Jongin with no shame whatsoever. “What are you doing?”  
  
“You smell good,” Baekhyun says, then pounces a little closer, now bumping his nose against Jongin’s jaw, running up and down there.  
  
Jongin makes a noise of surprise, and tries to jerk away again.  
  
Baekhyun grouses unhappily, but is cut short when Junmyeon calls from the kitchen, “Jongin! Help me make dinner!”  
  
Jongin huffs and Baekhyun whines, mashes his face against Jongin’s cheek one last time before Jongin shoves him away and heads to the kitchen.  
  
“I don’t get it,” Jongin says a few minutes later, as he sits and watches Junmyeon brush dirt away from a bunch of mushrooms. “Why are you and Yifan doing this?”  
  
At least Junmyeon has the decency not to pretend he doesn’t know exactly what Jongin’s talking about. “We want to be careful,” he says. “The boys are young and have never been around an unmated Omega before.”  
  
“I can protect myself,” Jongin insists. He sounds like his own echo, reverberating in a canyon, his own words thrown back hat him, over and over again.  
  
Junmyeon slices the mushrooms and tosses them into the soup without another word.  
  
Luhan, on one hand, pushes Jongin harder than ever before. He takes Jongin out on border patrols despite Yifan’s protests, questions him when he doesn’t bring home the same amount of food after a hunt as Baekhyun or Kyungsoo. And it’s good -- if anything, Luhan expects _more_ out of him than before, holding him to higher standards, rather than lower. It’s refreshing.  
  
But on the other hand, Luhan also watches Jongin like a hawk. After the disagreement over sleeping arrangements, Luhan hasn’t interfered again, but Jongin can sense him watching every time he goes out on a hunt with just Sehun.  
  
Thankfully, the rest of the Betas act normally around Jongin. Zitao seems friendlier than before, actually, and he proves to be a good listener when they settle in for the night.  
  
Yifan doesn’t question Jongin again.  
  
Reluctance is apparent in his eyes when he lets Jongin follow them out on hunting trips or boundary checks. Luhan explains that Yifan’s been treating Junmyeon, the only Omega in the pack, in that way for so long, it’s probably hard for him to treat Jongin differently.  
  
But Yifan keeps his word, and allows Jongin to train with the rest of them -- although he does have a tendency to pair Jongin off with the Betas, usually either Kyungsoo or Jongdae. He praises Jongin more often, lets his hand rest briefly on Jongin’s shoulder, scenting him.  
  
And then Sehun.  
  
Jongin gets in a fight with the mountain pack for the first time since presenting as an Omega.  
  
It’s a standard check of the territory. It’s Jongin, Luhan, Baekhyun, Kyungsoo, and Sehun.  
  
“You’ve passed the boundary,” Luhan says warningly, to the other mountain wolves. Sometimes Jongin wonders how Luhan isn’t an Alpha.  
  
“The boundary’s right here,” one Alpha with dark blonde hair gestures to a young sapling.  
  
“And last week, it was back there.” Luhan narrows his eyes and points to the treeline behind the mountain pack wolves.  
  
The breeze shifts. The mountain pack Alpha sticks his nose in the air. He turns to Jongin with a lecherous sneer. “An Omega? Are you lost, little one?”  
  
Jongin snarls. Kyungsoo and Baekhyun have to hold him back.  
  
The Alpha laughs. “Hold that bitch back,” he smiles, “God, I haven’t seen a young Omega in years. That old fuck Junmyeon doesn’t count. If this one gets any closer, I’ll fuck him right here, just bend him over and slide in that pussy -- ”  
  
Fangs and claws slide out as Jongin’s stomach roils with anger and disgust. Jongin leashes his temper. He says, “That one’s mine.”  
  
Luhan lets out a blood-curdling cry, and they spring into action.  
  
Jongin kills the mountain Alpha with one hand, ripping his claws from throat to groin in one satisfying slice. He grips the wolf’s neck with his hands and lets his fangs slide out as the Alpha gurgles. Jongin smiles without humor. “That’s for Junmyeon.”  
  
Jongin turns around and almost runs into Sehun.  
  
“Hey,” Sehun says. His nose drips blood, looks broken. He smiles and Jongin’s never been more smitten.  
  
“Hi,” Jongin says. “Duck.”  
  
Sehun drops to his knees and Jongin grabs the Beta that leaps over Sehun’s head. Jongin digs his claws into the Beta’s shoulders. The Beta scratches and claws and lashes, so Jongin clamps his teeth onto the wolf’s neck, bites until blood bursts bitter and sharp on his tongue.  
  
The Beta howls in pain and Sehun goes, “Actually, that’s a wolf.”  
  
Jongin lets the Beta go. It cries out in agony then darts away, following the rest of its packmates down the knoll and towards the mountains.  
  
They head back, teeth set on edge, bruised and battered. The mountain Alpha’s words are still ringing in Jongin’s head.  
  
Sehun walks next to Jongin, their pace matched step for step. Sehun holds out his hand a bit, as if reluctant to initiate touch. Jongin takes his hand and holds him close, their pulses pounding in sync as they walk home.  
  
  
  
\---  
  
  
  
Sehun likes Jongin. He likes that they found each other, before either of them presented, and fell in love long before either of them knew they were Alpha or Omega.  
  
Unlike Jongin, Sehun was not born in the woods.  
  
Sehun was born in the mountains. The pack knows this. The pack doesn’t seem to care. It’s less about blood and more about loyalty, for which Sehun is grateful. He feels like he stands out, too skinny and too pale for the forest. He’s not sure to which land he belongs, the woods or the mountains: to the former, he loves and lives; to the latter, his body and his being fits.  
  
The mountain wolves are thin, to survive better in the cold winters when prey is hard to find in the snow and rock. The mountain wolves are deathly silent, in conversation and in hunt, preferring the wind to their own voices.  
  
This Sehun knows for sure: he belongs to Jongin, despite their origins. He likes that he had always belonged to Jongin, even before Sehun woke up one warm summer night to the delicious smell of Jongin’s slick.  
  
When Sehun thinks of Jongin, he thinks of fireflies and vanilla and wildflowers and the smell of honeycomb. He thinks of the smell of sunlight. Moist earth underneath detritus. The smell of dirt after rain. Sehun likes that he’s always had Jongin’s name tucked into the pocket of his cheek, tattooed on his tongue, seamed onto his breastbone. A secret.  
  
Sehun belongs to Jongin in the same way that Jongin belongs to the forest.  
  
Sehun knows that Jongin is angry. Here is why: Sehun is an Alpha, Jongin is an Omega. That is the way nature made them to be. But Sehun doesn’t think of Jongin as an Omega. He is, first and foremost, a wolf, like Sehun.  
  
  
  
“Hold that bitch back,” a disgusting mountain Alpha smiles, “God, I haven’t seen a young Omega in years. That old fuck Junmyeon doesn’t count. If this one gets any closer, I’ll fuck him right here, just bend him over and slide in that pussy -- ”  
  
Sehun’s blood is roaring in his ears, in his veins; he can’t think, all he can see is white-hot blood and all he can think is _don’t you fucking dare,_ and _I’ll slit your goddamn throat,_ and _Jongin is mine mine mine_.  
  
Jongin kills the sick fuck himself. Sehun’s glad.  
  
They walk back side by side, veering away from the rest of the pack and heading towards the weeping willow near the stream. It’s their quiet place, their secret. If the others know, they don’t say anything, and Luhan only shoots them a concerned glance before tending to Kyungsoo’s sprained ankle.  
  
Across a grass clearing, ducking under low hanging branches they go, darting through the forest without a sound, as gracefully as fish in the ocean.  
  
Jongin follows Sehun across the stream obediently, the water lapping delicately at his throat.  
  
Sehun thinks that Jongin is the golden child of the forest, with his sunkissed skin and earthy brown hair and the constant smell of petrichor hanging around him. The forest loves him, parting her branches and letting Jongin divulge her secrets. The water loves him, parting waves and ripples for Jongin.  
  
Sehun swims up to their rock first, sitting himself down to watch Jongin slip through the water. Today, the stream has chosen one of Sehun’s favorite patterns: the water sluices over Jongin’s tan shoulders in rivulets, swirling in snake-like shapes, dancing in concentric circles.  
  
Sehun belongs to Jongin in the same way that Jongin belongs to the forest, to the water, to the sun.  
  
Sehun knows that Jongin is angry.  
  
“Let me help you,” Sehun says. He doesn’t let his worry bleed into his voice, for if he did, he knows that Jongin wouldn’t let him touch. Jongin doesn’t want his pity. But Sehun thinks that Jongin wants his touch.  
  
Jongin crawls up onto the rock and kneels in front of Sehun, the perfect picture of obedience. If it were anyone else, even a Beta, Sehun would think that it is submission: Jongin’s head is tilted back, revealing the lovely column of his golden throat, his limbs loose and malleable.  
  
Sehun swallows his desire.  
  
He washes out the grime and the dirt, cleaning out the scratches that crisscross Jongin’s shoulders. Jongin hisses in pain and Sehun laps away the blood with his tongue.  
  
“You don’t need to prove anything,” Sehun says, lathering Jongin’s soft hair.  
  
“I do,” Jongin says petulantly, “You don’t understand. I don’t want to lose myself. I don’t want to lose control.”  
  
“Okay,” Sehun says. He feels himself shiver. He lets his fingers slip out of Jongin’s hair.  
  
Jongin visibly scents the air to check no one is around -- no one is, there’s no one but the sun and the wind for miles and miles -- before he confides quietly, “It’s like they don’t understand -- I can be an Omega and I can be strong. I can take life and I can give it. They treat me differently, they coddle me.”  
  
Sehun raises an eyebrow. “Do I coddle you?”  
  
“No,” Jongin snaps. “And if you did I’d snap your neck.”  
  
Sehun huffs in amusement.  
  
Jongin shoves him into the water but Sehun just drags him in afterwards. They emerge on the banks of the stream dripping wet, their clothes stuck like a second skin.  
  
The sunlight hits Jongin just right, illuminating his tan chest and long legs and clean skin. He looks too perfect, too pretty. Sehun growls and pounces, wrestling him into the grass so he can dirty him up a bit.  
  
Clear peals of laughter ring in the air as Jongin snaps his jaws playfully at Sehun. Jongin rumbles underneath him, a husky, growling purr spilling from between his jaws, an inhuman sound.  
  
Sehun pins Jongin to the earth and rolls him into the mud. Jongin bares his teeth challengingly and twists, but ends up still under Sehun’s hands.  
  
The dirt sticks to their wet hair and wet skin. Sehun doesn’t care. He reaches out and grabs the back of Jongin’s neck, squeezing tight. Jongin mewls against Sehun’s neck and Sehun can feel the faint indentation of teeth there. Sehun growls and presses Jongin harder into the ground, grinding his body into Jongin’s. Jongin’s legs fall open, limp, and Sehun’s waist fits perfectly around his thighs.  
  
“Bite me,” Sehun commands, only half joking.  
  
Sharp fangs ghost at the smooth skin of Sehun’s throat, right under his jawline. Sehun feels himself shiver in anticipation.  
  
“Yah,” Minseok yells out suddenly, coming closer and grabbing Sehun by the scruff, yanking him back.  
  
Jongin growls in annoyance and flops back into the mud.  
  
“Don’t play too rough,” Minseok chides Sehun. As if Jongin hadn’t just killed another werewolf, as if Jongin hadn’t unsheathed his claws and dug into flesh like he were digging into the earth, slicing open skin as easily as peeling a grape.  
  
Sehun huffs in irritation and shoves Minseok away. Minseok glares at him and Sehun mumbles an apology.  
  
“He didn’t mean it,” Sehun says, as soon as Minseok leaves.  
  
“Yeah,” Jongin says. They both pretend it's not a lie.  
  
  
  
Junmyeon comes up to Sehun a few weeks later.  
  
“Come help me find some chestnuts,” he says to Sehun. They walk, foraging in silence for a few minutes. Then Junmyeon says, apropos of nothing, “You can’t knot him.”  
  
A lesser Alpha would’ve dropped the chestnuts. Sehun just bites back his surprise and says blandly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
  
“You do,” Junmyeon says, “And I think you can feel it. Both of you are too young, too inexperienced.”  
  
“I won’t hurt him,” Sehun insists, though he’s beginning to see Junmyeon’s point.  
  
“He might hurt you,” Junmyeon points out. “Jongin is strong, much stronger than me. He’s faster than Baekhyun, and has a nastier bite than Chanyeol. You know that. If you try and knot him this season, you’ll both end up hurting each other.”  
  
Sehun doesn’t say anything.  
  
“Right now he's confused.” Junmyeon continues, “He’s angry. In a year or two, when the hormones settle down, he’ll be able to control himself.”  
  
“Thank you for telling me this,” Sehun says. He can and he will control himself. For Jongin’s sake. For both of their sakes.  
  
Junmyeon smiles kindly. “You’re welcome.”  
  
  
  
“What does it feel like,” Sehun asks another time, when they’re lying out in the grass under the willow tree.  
  
Jongin’s sprawled out, loose and comfortable, legs spread and jaw slack in a way that he doesn’t allow himself to be around the rest of the pack. It feels like Jongin’s always on his guard, always wants to prove himself -- stronger, better, faster than anyone expects of him. Sehun’s glad that Jongin can relax around him.  
  
“What does what feel like?” Jongin’s carving something again, his sharp knife catching silver slivers of sunlight as he whittles away.  
  
Sehun props himself onto an elbow to watch. “Your heat.”  
  
Jongin puts down the knife and wood. He folds his hands loosely over his chest. A butterfly flits in between the willow leaves, dancing in the sun.  
  
“It feels like burning. And drowning. And dying.”  
  
Sehun watches the river reeds sway in the current.  
  
“It feels like I’ll just burn up if nothing’s in me. And it feels like I’m drowning in all of the smells. I can smell everything better. I can hear things more clearly.” Jongin takes a piece of tall grass and wraps it around his finger. Without looking at Sehun, Jongin asks. “What do you feel?”  
  
Sehun takes a moment to sort out his words. “I feel good,” he begins haltingly. “And I feel bad.” Sehun swallows. Hesitancy is a luxury that he can’t afford as an Alpha; he burned away his last reserves of hesitation as a boy, since he learned that hesitation means weakness, and that the apex predators of the woodland seek out weakness in the same keen way a shark seeks out blood.  
  
But he hesitates now, because Jongin can understand. “I feel like an animal,” Sehun confesses. “No control.”  
  
Jongin makes a strange noise in the back of his throat. Sehun wants to touch his mouth.  
  
“You are one,” Jongin says. “I am one, too. We all are. But that just means that we’re complicated.”  
  
Sehun frowns. “What do you mean?”  
  
“I mean, that’s who we are. Part human, part animal.” Jongin blinks serenely. He looks unbelievable young. “We can’t take that away. We can only find balance.”  
  
  
  
Winter.  
  
Snow comes in blankets, smothering the grass and flowers and sunlight. Sehun goes out and hunts, each trip twice as long and half as fruitful as it would be in the summer. He goes by himself, squaring his shoulders and trudging through the snow.  
  
“Don’t go by yourself,” Junmyeon pleads, but every member of their pack has something to prove, and Sehun is no exception.  
  
Some part of him, some strand of his DNA and some part of his blood, still belongs to the mountains. Sehun remembers being born in the snow.  
  
To the rest of the forest pack, they see snow as a hinderance, a burden. Sehun sees it as rebirth, a cleansing. He thinks that the snow comes and chases away the dead, trims away the weak and the excess fat of the land. But he only thinks this because Jongin had explained it to him as such, many moons ago. So much of what Sehun believes comes from Jongin. It’s hard to tell where Sehun ends and where Jongin begins.  
  
Sehun heads out into the snow and, for an afternoon, can pretend that he is the only living creature in the white winter, just him and the cold. Sehun wonders what it’d be like to live alone. He wonders if he’ll ever return to the mountains.  
  
Upon returning to the den, Sehun stops in his tracks just before opening the door. Something smells off.  
  
The door opens and Jongin barrels out, running into Sehun.  
  
“You left without me,” Jongin frowns. His hair is rumpled and he’s bundled up in one of Sehun’s old sweaters. He smells like the smoky fire crackling in the hearth and roasted pine nuts.  
  
“You were sleeping,” Sehun says. “Close the door, we’ll let out all the warm air.”  
  
Jongin shoves Sehun back into the snow; the front door closes behind him.  
  
Snow begins falling in tufts, but Jongin seems uncaring.  
  
“Aren’t you cold?” Jongin asks, trudging forward.  
  
“Aren’t you?”  
  
“No.”  
  
Sehun follows Jongin to their reserve of firewood, now buried under the snow. They bend down and begin dragging the much-needed wood out.  
  
“Next time, why don’t you wait for me?” Jongin asks.  
  
“Why didn’t you ask me?” Sehun counters.  
  
Jongin drops the piece of wood he’s holding and steps closer. “You don’t want me to come with you?”  
  
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Sehun protests. He takes a step back and his backside hits the bark of a young redwood.  
  
Jongin steps closer and Sehun lets his guard down, distracted. He slackens his jaw to better scent the air: cloying nectar and sweet pollen and sex and warm blood and sunlight.  
  
“What,” Sehun slurs out, his fangs slipping out.  
  
A low and throaty moan is all the warning that Sehun gets.  
  
Jongin lurches forward and grapples them into the dirty snow, twisting and shoving until Sehun ends up with his back plastered to the cold ground and his hands pinned above his head in Jongin’s iron grip. Jongin rocks his ass right on Sehun’s crotch and Sehun realizes belatedly that he’s hard, that his body knew before he did, that the cocktail of pheromones in the air had already shot straight to his cock and there’s this delicious slickness leaking out of Jongin.  
  
An animal part of him, some primitive reflex, is howling for Sehun to peel off their clothes, to snap his hips right up into that tight heat, slide into him, to take take take.  
  
And another side of him, the human half, feels wrong, feels like he’s betraying Jongin because Jongin isn’t thinking clearly and he wouldn’t want this --  
  
“Stop,” Sehun pants out, “Jongin, please stop.”  
  
The snow is burning cold underneath him and Jongin is burning hot above him.  
  
Jongin whines. His eyes are blown, inky black and fierce. “You don’t want me?”  
  
“God,” Sehun snarls, jerking up and shouldering his way out of Jongin’s grip, mashing Jongin’s cheek into the dirt with two hands; and Jongin’s ass sticks up, the seat of his pants already soaked, dripping wet, the smell of him overbearing.  
  
Sehun feels light-headed. “Of course I want you,” he pants. A throbbing desire jams his throat, drawing heat from his bones, from some ancient part of him -- from some savage and barbaric thing that’s been living in him since Sehun let out his first howl, since the very first wolf howled at the moon.  
  
“Then _take_ me,” Jongin growls.  
  
“Listen,” Sehun snaps. The wolf inside him is snarling -- _take fuck bite mark_ \-- and its ruthless ferocity feels unbelievably close; if Jongin were to bite him now, if Jongin were to skin him open, all he would find is fur and tooth and claw. “Listen to me, Jongin.”  
  
From a distance, Sehun can hear Luhan’s sharp, “What is that?” from inside the den and knows it’s only a moment before they’ll be torn apart. “You’re more than this -- _think_ , you don’t want this, you wouldn’t want to lose control, you _told_ me -- ”  
  
Baekhyun emerges first, comes trotting up, sniffing curiously and Sehun growls at him, flashing his eyes and spitting in warning. Baekhyun jerks away; Luhan and Minseok quickly take his place and it takes the both of them to tear Jongin away.  
  
Sehun feels his heart rattling in his chest. He prays he did the right thing.  
  
Junmyeon locks himself into Jongin’s room and the rest of the pack becomes skittish, nervous. Baekhyun and Chanyeol keep prowling the hallway in front of the room, half protective and half curious. Yifan goes hunting and doesn’t come back for hours. Sehun curls up in his blanket and tries to control himself.  
  
On the second night, a dulcet and aged scent wafts out to the kitchen. Baekhyun sticks his nose in the air, and then the pack descends into chaos.  
  
Junmyeon hasn’t gone into heat in years -- Sehun’s never seen him go through one -- so it must be the proximity to Jongin, another fertile Omega, that triggers it.  
  
Yifan all but sprints to their room, and when Chanyeol and Baekhyun chase him eagerly, speculative, he turns on his heels and snarls in warning, eyes flashing red. “Get away,” Yifan barks, his body a blockade in front of the Omegas, protecting his pack, protecting his line. Sehun narrows his eyes but when Yifan’s hand touches the doorknob, behind which houses the two fertile Omegas, Sehun leaps forward.  
  
“If you touch him,” Sehun seethes, “I’ll rip out your eyes. I’ll rip out your eyes and stuff them down your throat so you can see me tear out your guts, Yifan, don’t  _touch him_ \-- ”  
  
Yifan barely blinks and the rest of the Betas have to tear the young Alphas away as Yifan slips into the room.  
  
Sehun doesn’t sleep for the next few nights.  
  
All he can smell is the ripe scent of Omega slick; all he can hear is Yifan’s guttural grunts and Junmyeon’s whining; all he can see is his white hands trembling in front of him.  
  
He prays that he did the right thing.  
  
Sehun only gets one glance when Minseok opens the door to bring in three trays of food. Three bodies are piled on the bed, but Sehun only cares for one: Jongin’s sweaty and trembling, his hair sticking up and he smells like everything Sehun can’t have. Minseok slams the door and shoos Sehun away.  
  
On the last night of the Omegas’ heats, Sehun crawls out of his room. There are eight crescents of red on his hands, four on each palm, from where he’s dug his claws into his own skin to keep himself from giving in to the wolf.  
  
He drags his blanket to the locked room, and sits with his back to the door, the blanket draped over him.  
  
It’s nearly midnight, and the smells of Junmyeon’s mild heat have nearly subsided. He and Yifan are sleeping.  
  
The third occupant of the room knocks over a chair, and there’s a scrabble of claw against hardwood as Jongin comes and sits by the door on the other side. The door thumps. Sehun knows that Jongin’s leaning against the wood, just like him.  
  
“Sehun,” Jongin says. He sounds pitiful.  
  
Sehun whines. He gets up and starts pacing, back and forth in front of the locked door, like a dog who wants to be let in during a storm, begging, pleading, just for the faintest hint of Jongin’s smell, the smell of dandelion wine and raw tree sap, the smell of summer caught and stoppered and fermented.  
  
“Sehun,” Jongin says again. His voice breaks and Sehun wants to cry. “Sehun.”  
  
  
  
The next morning, Sehun has to dart out of the way to avoid being crushed by the wooden door when Yifan opens it. Sehun is up and his fangs are out, his vision blurred into one single focus point on Yifan’s neck. Before Yifan can take three steps out of the room, Sehun’s pressing four claws against his throat.  
  
Yifan doesn’t even blink. “I didn’t touch him.”  
  
“Good,” Sehun says quietly, calmer than he feels.  
  
“It helped him,” Yifan says, his eyes glittering darkly. “Having an Alpha’s scent. One that has enough control, I mean.”  
  
Sehun doesn’t react to the insult. “I know,” he lifts his head. He presses his claws against Yifan’s bare throat. It’d be so easy to cut. To kill.  
  
Sehun steps back. “I know, and that’s why I stayed out here.”  
  
“Good,” Yifan says slowly.  
  
“Good,” Sehun echoes.  
  
Yifan gives him one last look before walking calmly away.  
  
Sehun heads into the room.  
  
Junmyeon’s sleeping on a pile of blankets on the floor, nothing visible of his body besides the dark nest of hair that peeks out. Sehun gives him a cursory sniff to make sure there isn’t any scent of blood, then climbs onto the bed that’s been stripped of its sheets.  
  
“Jongin,” Sehun says, shaking Jongin awake. “What happened?”  
  
Jongin blinks sleepily. “What are you doing here?”  
  
Sehun hesitates, but then Jongin holds out a hand and tugs him into the bed. Loose-limbed and compliant, Sehun goes easily, melding his body into Jongin’s like when they were children. Jongin smells like sleep and sweat and slick.  
  
“Did he touch you,” Sehun murmurs.  
  
Jongin huffs. “Do you think I’d let him?”  
  
Satisfied, Sehun nuzzles his face into the nape of Jongin’s neck. After making a drowsy noise, Jongin falls asleep again.  
  
Rationally, he knows that what Yifan did was the best option. Sehun knows that in other packs, that wouldn’t have happened, that Jongin’s wishes would have not been respected. In other packs, as soon as the pack leader mounts the prettiest, youngest Omega, the doors remain open and anyone interested wanders in to take what they want.  
  
Sehun ignores the throbbing ache in his groin. He feels like he’s been split open, torn between his human half and his animal half.  
  
  
  
Like clockwork, the seasons change.  
  
They wander out one spring morning, to where melted snow sluices over young grass at the edge of the territory. A lone mountain wolf strays too far on the wrong side of the boundary and neither of them hesitate before leaping up. Sehun holds the wolf down and Jongin goes for the kill, delivers a fatal blow to the head. It’s a merciless world. Sehun knows this. Jongin knows this. They’re used to it.  
  
But what happens next surprises Sehun.  
  
“We should bury him,” Jongin says, staring down at the body.  
  
“Why,” Sehun pants, chest still heaving from exertion. They’ve never buried an enemy before.  
  
“I was thinking about it,” Jongin says. “Don’t you want to be buried if this happens to you?”  
  
Sehun recoils a bit, confused. But he helps Jongin dig a hole anyway.  
  
The cold earth still has yet to thaw; the last vestiges of winter still clutch desperately onto the dirt with icy fingers, so it takes longer than expected to dig a sizeable pit for the body.  
  
“I mean,” Jongin says later, when the earth has been placed back and all that’s left of their killing is the blood under their teeth and claws, “I mean that all our lives we’ve been living in the forest, eating plants and animals. When you’re buried, all of the energy goes back to the earth, back to the plant and animals. So you can feed them, just as they have fed you.”  
  
A pause. Then, “That’s morbid,” Sehun says dryly.  
  
Jongin punches him good-naturedly and they head back soon after that.  
  
But the words ring in Sehun’s head.  
  
Sehun thinks that Jongin understands the forest almost as well as he understands himself. Jongin knows the shape of the trees and the direction of the wind and the color of the stream on a crisp autumn morning. And he knows that nature is uncaring, but he has found beauty -- in the shape of a honeycomb cell or the strength of a whipcord thin willow branch.  
  
Jongin knows that the universe works in balance.  
  
In nature, there is the strong and the weak; but in strength, there is weakness and in weakness, there is strength. This Jongin understands better than all of them.  
  
  
  
Time passes.  
  
Jongin’s less angry than before; he’s grown into his own skin, and he's rarely afraid.  
  
His second heat comes and this time, Sehun is the one with his nerves frayed. If someone so much as looks at Jongin the wrong way, Sehun will curl back his upper lip and snarl.  
  
Jongin’s sitting in front of the hearth one late morning. Red-orange light flickers on his face. Sehun’s curled up at his side, head resting against Jongin’s thigh. A knife hits the wooden cutting board rhythmically as Jongdae cuts mushrooms and slices of meat.  
  
Chanyeol and Kyungsoo come back from marking their boundaries, the door swinging open and letting in a rush of cold air. Sehun sends them a withering look and gets up to close the door, since the others make no move to do so themselves.  
  
By the time Sehun turns back to the fire, Chanyeol and Kyungsoo are piled next to Jongin: Chanyeol’s eyes are half-lidded as he nuzzles into Jongin’s shoulder, and Kyungsoo’s pressed from shoulder to hip against Jongin’s side.  
  
It’s not unreasonable: they often huddle together in the winter to conserve body heat and preserve warmth. Pack translates to intimacy, and it’s no different from the way Luhan buries his face into Minseok’s chest after a long hunt, the way Yixing and Jongdae and Kyungsoo curl up like puppies at night.  
  
But Jongin smells ripe and fertile and Sehun’s hackles are raised in an instant, a growl coming out of his throat as he turns on Chanyeol and Kyungsoo.  
  
It isn’t the first time either; Sehun’s been restless, itching for a fight this whole week, growling at Minseok and Luhan and even Yifan when they come too close to Jongin. Before, Jongin had ignored it, but now he finally snaps in irritation, shooting up and dragging Sehun out of the den.  
  
“What is wrong with you?” Jongin hisses once they’re out of earshot.  
  
Sehun counters, “What is wrong with you? You let them climb all over you, marking you?”  
  
“It doesn’t mean anything,” Jongin says.  
  
“It means something to me,” Sehun argues. “It wouldn’t matter if you were mated, like Junmyeon -- ”  
  
“And why does that matter? I don’t belong to you,” Jongin snaps, cold and stiff.  
  
“I belong to you,” Sehun says plaintively. He wants Jongin to understand -- he _needs_ Jongin to understand.  
  
There's a pause. And then -- then Jongin sighs and turns back to the den, hands shoved into his pockets. “Stop being so dramatic,” he calls over his shoulder.  
  
Sehun wants to chase after him and wrestle him into the snow, mark him, bite him. Let him come, Sehun tells himself, cajoling that dark desire inside of him, let it be on his own terms.  
  
Jongin enlists the help of Junmyeon later that evening as his heat fully sinks in. Sehun goes for a hunt. He kills two deer and drags their dead carcasses back to the den. He thinks of Jongin, on his hands and knees, perfectly postured.  
  
Sehun fights with Baekhyun, pushes him into the snow, and bites on Baekhyun’s shoulder a bit too hard to be friendly. He thinks of Jongin’s mouth, his soft cock, the curve of his thighs.  
  
Jongin crawls into Sehun’s bed the next day. His heat has been satiated, his fire banked. Sehun still wants him, more than ever.  
  
“Will you wait for me?” Jongin asks. Wait for me to know myself, to control myself, he doesn’t say.  
  
Sehun closes his eyes and tugs Jongin closer. “Yes,” he says. I can wait forever, he thinks.  
  
  
  
Jongin, like Junmyeon had predicted, has controlled his anger. He’s tempered his fire into something controllable, something that’s hot and dangerous but leashed. He’s muscular in some places and sleek in others. Sehun can never not look at him.  
  
Sehun does not push.  
  
He wants to respect Jongin’s wishes. He wants to wait.  
  
From a distance, he watches Baekhyun and Jongin prepare lunch together, Baekhyun’s hand on the small of Jongin’s back, nose dipped down to drink in Jongin’s scent. Sehun eats the soup they make and through his teeth, tells them that it’s delicious.  
  
Yifan has always had a soft spot for Omegas, and as Jongin ages, he takes Yifan’s praise more easily. Sehun tracks the way Yifan’s shoulders edge in front of Jongin during their fights, the way Yifan grazes his fingers over Jongin’s arm. Sehun wants to push Yifan away, but bites on his tongue hard enough to draw blood, instead.  
  
Junmyeon seems to notice Sehun’s distress.  
  
“Don’t worry yourself,” Junmyeon says one evening, as they’re looking for wild chestnuts together, in the undergrowth near the river. "The time will come. Let things come as they will."  
  
Sehun whines and digs his nose into Junmyeon’s arm, breathing in that mellow, sweet Omega smell. It’s different from Jongin’s, like how aged wine is different from sweet grapes. But it’s familiar enough that Sehun crawls into Junmyeon’s room that night to huddle close, out of some strange, detached desire, but mostly out of vindication.  
  
Yifan opens the door to see Sehun humming in Junmyeon’s ear, and chases him out of the room with a warning growl. Sehun smiles harshly and seeks out Luhan.  
  
  
  
Two more of Jongin’s heats pass.  
  
Each time, Sehun draws away.  
  
As soon as the cloying sweet scent of pollen and fertility passes, Jongin comes to Sehun. Zitao’s turned a blind eye, preferring to pretend to sleep whenever Sehun sneaks into Jongin’s room. Their touch remains chaste, a familiar comfort.  
  
His fifth heat comes the very next autumn.  
  
In the weeks before, it’s just a faint smell, the slightest hint of warm milk and nectared honey. But it’s enough for Jongin to use.  
  
Jongin rides his heat hard and wet, smiles sweetly and tilts his lips just so that the others will stumble and look too long. Jongin edges into the smell of ripened fruit and dulcet tones; on one memorable border patrol, he lures in two Alphas and kills them with their noses still in the air. He has grown ruthless, confident, fierce in the way a mother protects her brood, fierce in the way a wildfire blazes the earth. Jongin belongs to his body, belongs to his Omega scent now in the same way he belongs to the forest. Sehun is head over heels in love.  
  
They stumble back that night and steal away into the woods, like they always have. Jongin takes them to the weeping willow, his smile bright and contagious. Tonight feels different, hanging heavy with anticipation.  
  
Moonlight glints on Jongin’s wet skin. Sehun stares, not bothering to hide his admiration, taking in Jongin’s figure against the black water, against the dark reeds.  
  
“Sehun,” Jongin says, the name fond and familiar and perfect in his red mouth. He reaches out and Sehun takes his hand.  
  
Under the moon's peering gaze, Sehun pushes into Jongin slowly, teeth brushing over Jongin's throbbing pulse. Jongin is tight, wet, perfect. His fingers softly slip down Sehun’s spine, his mouth slack and open with pleasure -- their first time, for both of them. Sehun rocks as gently as he can.  
  
  
  
Far away from cities of steel and asphalt, from clouds of smoke and pollution, where the woods are lovely, dark, and deep, lives a strange and savage race. Half man, half beast, they roam the rolling hills, the mysterious forest, the mountains which rise and fall like uneven breaths.  
  
Here is a land where nature rules with an iron fist: rivers, deep and blue as lapis lazuli, streak across beds of fresh grass; lush trees, tall and sturdy, age year after year, their roots gnarled and sunken deep within the earth. Here is a land, wild and savage, untouched and untamed.  
  
Here is how our story ends:  
  
“Sehun,” Jongin says, his voice and scent and body familiar. Sehun loves him in the same way he loves the woods, his pack: deeply, intimately. “Sehun.”  
  
They’re by the stream, under the weeping willow. They’re everywhere and nowhere, in the woods and the mountains, in the earth and the water, the sun and the shade. Sehun and Jongin.  
  
“Jongin,” Sehun replies, his voice warm. He reaches out to touch Jongin’s wrist, feels the flutter of his pulse there. “Jongin, Jongin, Jongin.”

**Author's Note:**

> I would request that my body in death be buried not cremated, so that the energy content contained within it gets returned to the earth, so that flora and fauna can dine upon it, just as I have dined upon flora and fauna during my lifetime.
> 
> \- Neil deGrasse Tyson


End file.
